For a chance to win this new book, “Simply Stitched” (featuring 20 beautiful, original embroidery motifs, plus projects and instructions), tell me about one of your favorite needlework projects in the comments below. I’ll toss your name into a hat and draw a lucky winner sometime mid-July.
Read about Simply Stitched in the June-July issue of MaryJanesFarm, “Fresh Egg Overture.” Stay tuned for more magazine-related giveaways. If you’re not yet a subscriber to my magazine, MaryJanesFarm, subscribe here for $19.95/year.
One of my favorite needlework projects is a yet to be completed memory quilt that I’ve been working on for my daughter for quite a few years. When it’s done it will consist of 72 cross stitched squares. The squares are all different. Some are versions of her name and initials, others represent her favorite things like cats and the moon. Still others commemorate things like her college degrees, purchase of her first house and the birth of her daughter. I’m even incorporating some saved keepsakes into some squares, like items from her Brownie, Girl Scout and school uniforms. I hope to get it done this year!
My favorite project was my first. A dresser scarf of red roses. My mother was sceptical that I had the patience to finish. She was so proud that I had finished it she added a beautiful lace border for me.
Some of my favorite projects have been cross-stitch samplers and smaller projects. My first big project was a Williamsburg Sampler that took me about 1 year to complete. It is framed and in our bedroom still. I love historical themes and copies of children’s learning lessons.
Amy, your keepsake quilt is going to be such a treasure for your daughter!
Mine was when I was about 20 years old newly married, maybe 2 years or so with a new baby, living in Germany while my hubby was in the military, I embroidered a pair of my bell bottom jeans from top to bottom with different flowers. It was the 1970’s so it had to be flowers! It took me about a year, but it kept me busy, from being sad and lonely on this new adventure in my young life!
I have thought of those jeans a lot over the years and wondered what happened them, wish I stil had them. I can not embroidered like that any more!
One of my favorite cross stitch projects is a garden design with herbs. Each herb is stitched along with its name in a octagon pattern with a beautiful bee scape in the center. It is a project I’m very proud of and hope it will be passed down in my family. 🐝
My daughter does needlework. she made Christmas stocking for all the horses in her barn (6 of them) and decorated them all differently. She’s very talented!
Many years ago I embroidered a large throw pillow for my mom with roses scattered all over it in pinks and purples with each of my children’s names and birth dates on it.
My favorite project so far was my sons Christmas stocking. I had chose a beautiful pattern from Mary Englebright featuring the Lion and the Lamb… started when he was born, completed when he turned 16 – you could say that one was REALLY on the extended program! I finished many other projects, but this one was large and I did not love all the colors, by the end I did, and am so pleased I finished it! <3 Perseverance right!
I showed my Mother how to cross stitch and over the years she created some real treasures! My favorite is two southern girls in their finery that I made into a pillow that reminds me of her when I admire it! Blessings to you!
My favorite needle work project was working with my daughter Emily at an embroidery class. Emily embroidered a fabulous blue, wool Christmas stocking for her friend. I worked on a couple of wool flower shaped chair cushions for our kitchen stools. It was so much fun being in the class with my daughter & working on our projects together!
My favorite needlework project was designing and cross stitching a welcome sign. It symbolized our home with a house, hearts, spruce trees and “welcome”. It has been around since the 1980’s and has moved with us to our 2 new homes, one in Ishpeming & one here in Ford River. I’m very proud when I look at it!
My most favorite needle work was a cross stitch of famous saying my mother in-law used to say while alive. I never had the chance to meet her. She died before coming into this family. I thought it would be a tribute to have hanging in our home. Still does today.
I think it would be a honor to win this wonderful needle work book.
Blessings to you today and always. Live in the moment and cherish all.
Sincerely, Winnie Jackson
My favorite needlework project was a combination of embroidery, candlewick, and cross-stitch motifs with a hardanger border around the edges of a folksy baby and cradle sampler with baby’s name and birth date. It’s such an elegant keepsake for a child, knowing that this child will feel loved.
Oh I am crazy for crazy quilts (and patchworks)! I am in the process of making my first one. I find it fascinating looking up & learning all the different stitches & motifs, why they were chosen & where to use them. It’s definitely a labor of love!
I love wool and doing wool application. Right now I ‘m doing a block of the month wall handing at my favorite quilt shop. I have always enjoy enjoyed working with wool and this block of the month is wool application. I’m always looking for something new.
I like embroidering kitchen towels. I love the designs from the 1930s through the1950s. I especially like the bluebird and chicken designs, but I was happy to find an old World War II aircraft mechanic pattern that I made for my friend Anna who is an aircraft mechanic. It featured a cat in overalls with a tool box, and it said ” Keep ’em Flying” .
My favorite stitching is on a crazy quilt. Ribbon embroidery and thread stitches are so rewarding!
My favorite needlework project is a display that I am working on for FACE of Fiber in the Rockies fiber arts show in Estes Park, Colorado in June. It is a set of 12 aprons-one for each month of the year. I am entitling it “Once Apron a Time”. They will not be your Grandmother’s aprons, but creative works of art.
I remember years ago finding several small silk ribbon embroidery kits bundled together at a thrift store. I bought the bundle And brought it home and over the course of the next year I made them all. They were basically just samplers, each was a different flower. One was a cactus plant in a pot. I made various crafty items with each one, such as a trinket box I made out of an old check box, and gave them away as gifts.
When my first daughter was born I took a scrap of yellow gingham and embroidered the verses of the nursery rhyme “Hush Little Baby”. I then use our Childcraft book as inspiration an embroidered a mother rocking her baby in a wooden rocker (the illustration in the book) I turned the piece into a pillow case for my little girl. That pillow served her well. It finally fell apart and is only a memory. But that tiny yellow pillow was with us for years… most of my needlework pieces are gone I tend to make things and give them away. I read once that that’s what Grandma Moses did too so I felt better about not keeping my work.
When I was in high school I gathered some floss and a needle from my Grandmother’s stash of craft material. I had never embroidered before or seen my Grandmother embroider either. I started lettering a bands name on my jeans & added a flower or two. No instructions or Internet. Enjoyed it the minute I picked the needle up and continue to this day to do needlework.
My favorite stitching project so far was one I did when my son was a toddler and had the flu. He wanted me with him, and it was tough for me to be patient when I felt I had so much to do that didn’t include sitting around. I wracked my brain for something I could do on the bed with him that would keep me interested and be useful. I settled on trying to “mend” my favorite, on-their-way-to threadbare pair of jeans. The backside had a rather revealing hole, so I borrowed my young daughter’s Klutz embroidery book and free-stitched a swirly sunshine over the hole with several new-to-me stitches. In the process of being present for my son, I learned some the new stitches, got a project done and was able to enjoy my now extra special (and newly spunky!) old jeans for a while longer.
My favorite needlework was my first attempt at needle-felting, I made a cute frog with the most charming impish grin. He sat on a shelf where he could be admired. Turns out, his biggest fan was the cat, so I relegated Frog to the bedroom where said cat isn’t allowed. I walk in from the barn one day to find the bedroom door ajar, and a trail of green, black, and white wool fragments across the floor. End of the trail is the cat, gleefully hugging Frog to his chest whilst kicking the daylights out of him with rear claws. Poor Frog was quite literally gutted, and despite my efforts could not be felted back together again.
Oh, did I leave the bedroom door open? Initially I thought I had, until I caught the cat stretching up the door and managing to twist the darn knob open!
Because of reading the Little House on the Prairie books and other similar era books as a child and learning of the girls’ work on alphabet samplers, I wanted to embroider a sampler too. My parents found an alphabet sampler in Virginia for me that I worked on and finished. It has hung on my walls in every house I’ve lived in since growing up.
Working with my granddaughter Emily on her first embroidery lesson was a treasured memory that I will hold forever. She was so intent on placing the needle up and down through the fabric and being careful to make sure that she stayed on the right side so her thread would not get hung up. She had careful drawn her own picture and carefully outlined the design. What a thrill when it was all completed!
I started embroidering when I was a Girl Scout. My grandmother embroidered and crocheted afghans and taught me and my mother, as well. My crocheting ended up with crooked edges, but my embroidered projects were fun and turned out well. I purchased a Springbok kit: a basket of flowers with a deep teal background with wool yarns in blues, greens and fuschia. My parents had it framed. A great moment of pride! Thanks for the chance to remember and share.
I bought a large, plain purse out of off-white ticking that had rope handles. I hand-sewed several crochet pieces that was made from family members to the purse. It turned out beautiful and then I made one for my mother. It was so much fun that I bought several large bags made out of burlap and did the same thing to them. It is such a great feeling making things with vintage crochet.
Right now I’m working on a quilt in which my mom and I embroidered 12 Dresden plates in shades of blue to be combined with 12 pieced Dresden plates. The center piece is an embroidered flower basket with small Dresden plate flowers. It’s a labor of love and I am looking forward to the day it adorns our bed!
I loved hand smocking and embroidering the dresses I made for my daughter when she was a child. Now I do all kinds of sewing including quilting. I would like to make embroidered bags!
I enjoy needle felting and making tiny wool paintings of gnomes and magical garden landscapes. I usually make it up as I go.
My great granny used to sit and stitch while my baba and momma would can everything from berries to peaches to raisins oh my!
My cute little discs she would create would ultimately become the decorative little cover for over the kids if the jars.
I was to little to help in the kitchen and not allowed to play with pins yet but the art she created with a simple needle and thread intrigued me.
Now, many years later I sit and stitch little embroiders “covers” for my jars and am immediately transported to a cherished time gone by. One when all the life’s in my life were still alive.
Wow, here is the fox sneaking into the hen house. what is my story, I am 81 and have never stitched anything,but as a youngster Granpa did show me how to do a baseball stitch., to mend my chopper mitts.
I hope this is a qualifier and I can show my better half I am good for something, besides eating all the cookies and fresh baked bread. We are as two bugs in a bed.
I really enjoyed reading “MaryJanes Farm” Lots of old memories there.